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This post is part 4 of our series on cleaning, organizing, and decluttering. Our goal by the end of the series is to leave you with some systems in place to let you feel in control of your life and not ruled by your stuff. Today, we are getting down to the nitty-gritty of decluttering and organizing. Be sure to subscribe to get the next post in the series sent straight to your inbox.
A Decluttering Holiday
Another Christmas has come and gone. Throughout Christmas, we have the perfect opportunity to pause and adore Christ. We reflect on who we are in him, which helps to put all of our possessions and pursuits in perspective.
Interestingly, the day after Christmas is known in most English-speaking countries as Boxing Day. We don’t celebrate this holiday in the States – though it shows up on most of our calendars – so I took some time to research what this holiday was all about. Basically, Boxing Day was developed in the Victorian Era as a day to go through your belongings and give away what you didn’t want to those who were less fortunate. People would assemble packages, sometimes adding in fruits and other goods, and spend the day delivering these packages to those in need. So, to sum up, this was basically a holiday of decluttering while also spreading some Christmas cheer. People would give out of their excess to help others who might not have as much.
As I look through my home, I see the excess and I’ve felt it. I try to minimize the amount of things in my home so that I don’t feel ruled by my belongings, but during Christmastime, I do go all out with trees, garlands, and little decorations. I think I have redecorated my Christmas tree just about every day because my two toddlers are determined to pull off the decorations they can reach and carry them around. We can often spend the holidays accumulating more and more things, only to look around after and feel the weight of all of the food, possessions, and other pursuits when the holidays are finished. Ironically, Boxing Day now has become another day with sales and other festivities. A day meant to be spent giving out of our excess has become a day to accumulate more things (because it was such a great deal!).
So, I think we should take a moment to reflect on the true sentiment of the tradition of Boxing Day and do a little decluttering ourselves in honor of the holiday.
What is Decluttering?
When you first begin the process of getting your life in order, you have to start by working through your house and decluttering. When you take the time to go through what you own and take stock of it, the daily routines of cleaning and tidying get so much easier. We’ll get to those daily routines later, but let’s focus first on this task. How do you declutter your house? What does this really even mean?
Clutter is all of those things in your home that don’t have a designated place. These things end up getting moved around, placed in odd nooks and crannies, and generally just becoming a pain to take care of. When you declutter, you are going through all of your belongings and determining whether or not it is something you should keep. Then, you organize the things that you want to keep by giving them a designated place to live. This two-part process – decluttering and organizing – will get your house in tip-top shape and make it easier to clean later on.
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Decluttering vs. Minimalism
Importantly, decluttering doesn’t have to mean minimalism. Minimalism is the philosophy of life that states that your life is better with the least amount of things possible. I’ve heard people who are minimalist talk about how you should only have enough forks for the number of people who live in your home so that you are forced to wash them every time. Or people who refuse to keep rugs in their homes because the rugs require too much work to vacuum or sweep. Some people even say they only use disposable plates – or plates bought cheaply at a thrift store – so that don’t have to wash them. They simply throw them away afterward.
In my opinion, that is just wasteful and wrong. That is not stewarding your things well for God.
If you live like this, you may find yourself unable to show hospitality because you don’t have enough silverware and plates for guests. Or you may be increasingly relying on plastic forks and cups which causes a host of issues for our landfills and planet. You may also pass on an idea to your family and friends that life is not meant to be enjoyed or savored because that requires certain possessions and things to do. Really, this is almost a platonic idea: That the body is bad – and anything that is material is bad. So we must operate in the spiritual realm and forego possessions.
We are told to steward our things well and not let them be Lord of our lives, yes. But, we are never told that our possessions are evil. Instead, I think we must be generous with what we own, and use what we own to help other people. To add chairs to our table to host dinners where we connect with friends. To help others by letting them borrow the car. To freely give and freely lend, not expecting anything in return.
When we talk about decluttering, we are not talking about minimalism. This means you may not have to get rid of everything you own (or only own 30 books like Marie Kondo says). Instead, everything you own needs to have a place. If you find shelves, closets, and containers overflowing, then you may need to get rid of some things. Give out of your excess. I find a good rule of thumb is to treat your house like a container. If what you own fits within the container, then you are doing okay. However, if you find that you cannot make it fit and you just keep buying more, you may need to do a major cleanout.
Step #1: Gather Your Tools
Whenever you start decluttering, the first thing you need to do is gather up your tools and figure out a plan. You can read about my tools here where I wrote about my four laundry baskets which I used to sort everything in the house.
Step #2: Plan Out Your Organization System
Through my research on decluttering and organizing, I recognized that planning is really the first step before you start pulling out all of your stuff and reorganizing it. We all have a tendency when we first move into a home or have a life change that means new furniture and more stuff, like having a baby or getting a new job or hobby, to just throw stuff wherever it will fit. We are not thoughtful or intentional in our organization systems, and then, we wonder why we get so annoyed later on with how everything is laid out. Some thoughtful planning, in the beginning, can help you to view your house with new eyes and visualize the most ideal setup for what you have now.
As you go through the planning process, you should ask yourself the following questions:
- What are current pain points in my house? What is annoying me? What is causing me grief? What just isn’t working?
- What do I love about my house? What is working?
- What activities need to take place in my house? What do I need for each of these activities?
- Where do each of these activities take place? Is the things I need for each activity in the room where the activities take place?
After I answered these questions myself, I got a few pieces of notebook paper and actually sketched out my house. I took a housing and shop class when I was in high school and one of the skills they taught us what the common symbols a draftsman uses as they make their blueprints. I put that to use.
What is really important as you draw your house plan is marking each of the areas that have storage in it. Mark your cabinets, closets, drawers, chests, and desks. Then label each room with the activities that happen in that room. Go back to the list of things you need for that activity and see if you are able to put each item in the room where you complete that activity. I had a habit of using one hall closet for everything, from pool towels to Christmas wrapping paper, to kid’s toys. When I did this, I realized how I could move certain items around so that I could put items in the places where they made sense.
You may realize as you are planning that you have some things that you hope to do in your house, including home improvements or renovations. I can tell you that renovations always take 2-4 times as long and cost 2-4 times as much as what you first expected. I was shocked at how different my house felt after just organizing and maybe moving around your furniture. You may find that you don’t need to go through the process of a lengthy home renovation because you’ve fixed the problem that you’ve had with your home to begin with.
Step #3: Choose the order for decluttering your home.
After you have made a game plan for where all your stuff is going to go, then you can get to work. I was most satisfied as I was decluttering with going from one end of my house to the other. I started with the entryway and laundry room and then moved on to the kitchen, living room, and office, before ending with the bedrooms and bathrooms. Doing this made sense because (1) it was the easiest way to make sure I hit every part of the house and (2) it matched how people entered my home. Even now, that is how I clean my home. We had a term for this growing up: “Mount Rushmoreing” it. Basically, it just means start at one end and go to the next. Importantly, you are trying to not get bogged down in the different areas of your home. Instead, you are systematically trying to get through each area quickly and efficiently.
If you’ve read Marie Kondo’s book, you know that she doesn’t recommend this. Instead, she recommends you organize by type. This means that you would gather up all the clothing from everywhere in the house and go through it at one time. Then, all the books from the house and go through those.
You can do this, but you’ll still have to put each ‘type’ of thing back in its respective place, which may need to get organized to make sure there’s space for it. If you have the time to organize your house in a week or less, maybe that would work better. But, if you need to fit organizing into the nooks and crannies of your life, it will be annoying to have everything in your home pulled out and piled up as her method requires.
One tip that you should glean from her method is to be sure that you are storing all of one type of thing in the same area in a container that is meant to be its permanent home. An example of this would be pens, pencils, and writing utensils. I used to keep a few in drawers and desks spread throughout the house. When I went through my office desk, I decided to move all of my pens, colored pencils, markers, etc. to my office. That’s when I realized I had a lifetime supply of pens, colored pencils, markers, etc.
When something is spread through the house, you don’t always realize how much of it you own. So if you choose to go through something room by room, you should go and gather up that type of thing once you’ve made a ‘home’ for it in that room. So for instance, if you are working on your entryway, and you decide that sunglasses should ‘live’ in the entryway, go through your house, and gather up all your sunglasses to put them in a container.
You can download the checklist of different areas in your home from our store at the link here. This checklist goes through each part of your home and helps you to declutter that space.
Step #4: Get to Work Decluttering!
Now, you just have to go through the process. With all the things you have in your home, you need to ask yourself 4 questions:
- How often do I use this?
- Do I have duplicates of this?
- Does this bring me joy or delight in any meaningful way?
- If I got rid of this, how inexpensive and/or easy would it be to replace it?
Then it takes some discernment to determine whether or not to keep the item or not. It does get easier over time, the more that you go through that process.
Some of the most helpful tricks that I did as I went through this process were:
- Make a basket for what you want to (1) keep, (2) donate, (3) throw away, and (4) move to other rooms. I printed off tags and tied them onto each basket so they would be ready to use whenever I had a few moments to go through things. You can find those tags in my shop here.
- Collect and purchase organizing containers. One of the things that was making it so hard to get my house put together was that I was trying to be stingy with the tools I used to organize it. It’s funny how we justify the cost of certain items, but view others as ‘too much.’ Basically, any container or box always seemed like an extravagant, useless purchase. I realized that I needed to just bite the bullet and get some boxes and containers or it would be hard to contain the stuff that I wanted to keep. After I collected several of the containers I wasn’t using around the house (and repurposed containers that previously just housed clutter), I realized that I didn’t really need to buy too much more. As long as you are not buying boxes and other containers that you don’t really need, these items are truly necessary to getting your house in order. Give yourself the license now to get the tools you need to get the job done right.
- Buy a label maker or use a marker to label your containers and drawers. This step was helpful for me, especially with the organizing style that I have. As I was going through the items and where I wanted to keep them, I used a label maker that we already had to plan out how I wanted my organization system to look. I labeled everything first and then added the items using my smaller containers. It’s helpful now even as I have visitors because they can see where everything is. You can purchase some labels you can laminate yourself from our shop here.
Sometimes, you may find that you have kept more than you should or you may find that you get rid of more than you should have. Ultimately, the more that you work at getting your life in order and taking control of your life back from your stuff, the easier it will be to figure out what you actually need.
Always our goal is to steward our possessions and our lives well. We want to glorify God and we want to help others.
So this boxing day – or whatever day you are reading this – remember to give out of your excess. You will feel a little lighter, and someone else may be blessed when you start the decluttering process.
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